The media has done a decent job eviscerating Trump’s acceptance speech and its panoply of lies. So I don’t need to go over well-ploughed ground. But I did want to note several Mideast-related foreign policy lies which have been neglected in media commentary. First, Trump said that Iran “Iran is on the path to nuclear weapons.” There isn’t even a guarantee that Iran was on the path to nuclear weapons before the recent nuclear deal. But it certainly isn’t on the path to getting them now, nor can it be for another fifteen years, when the deal ends.
He also went on the warpath about the existential threat posed by Islamism to this country:
To make life safe in America, we must also address the growing threats we face from outside America: we are going to defeat the barbarians of ISIS. Once again, France is the victim of brutal Islamic terrorism.
Not so fast. To say France was once again the target of terrorism might be accurate. But there is no proof so far that the Nice attack was Islamist terror. Note also, that Trump didn’t use the word “Islamist,” which I just did. He used the far more sweeping term “Islamic,” which connotes that Islam itself is a religion of terrorism. Yet another of the hateful, racist Islamophobic Trumpisms which have made him infamous.
French authorities have arrested a number of possible accomplices of the Nice killer. All one can say at this point is that they all are Muslim. No French authority has provided any direct evidence of contact between any of them and ISIS. It is possible that this was an Islamist terror plot. Or it may’ve been an expression of rage at the failure of the life of a Tunisian immigrant to France who had a dead-end job and a rancid life immersed in bisexual conquest and sexual excess.
Trump made an even greater error when he said this about the Orlando shooting:
…In Orlando, Florida, 49 wonderful Americans were savagely murdered by an Islamic terrorist. This time, the terrorist targeted our LGBT community. As your President, I will do everything in my power to protect our LGBT citizens from the violence and oppression of a hateful foreign ideology.
The only evidence Omar Mateen had any connection to ISIS is 911 calls which he made to police. But nothing else in his life shows any interest in politics or Islamism. In fact, everything else in his life points in an entirely different direction. He was a closeted gay male who largely failed in his attempt to reach out to other gays for love or understanding. As with the Nice attack, Mateen seems to have been a deeply troubled individual with mental health issues.
But if you’re Donald Trump, why let truth or facts get in the way of a good story?
In today’s Times, Paul Krugman offers an alarming critique of Trump’s fawning admiration for Vladimir Putin. He calls him the “Siberian Candidate” (an ironic reference to the film, The Manchurian Candidate). Trump sees in Putin a self-made man like himself. A man’s man. A tough man. But a man who can be reasoned with given proper terms. Like Trump, Putin is a man who disdains formalities, who despises convention. They are both men who believe in a few simple ideas whose authority derives from their own personalities.
Given that U.S. policy for the past decade has been based on a profound suspicion of Putin’s motives and an attempt to contain his wild, expansionist impulses in Ukraine and elsewhere, Trump as president would take our foreign policy into completely uncharted waters. Trump has expressed profound skepticism of NATO and the alliance calling for mutual aid in the event of Russian attack. All this has to be music to Putin’s ears. Any western leader who himself favors disbanding alliances predicated on containing Russian power is a friend to the Russian leader.
This is all reminiscent of Avigdor Lieberman’s extremely close relationship to Putin. It’s widely known that the Soviet KGB recruited agents among those Russian Jews who emigrated to Israel. Boris Krasny is one of the most infamous among them. Many Israelis including some in official intelligence agencies mistrust Lieberman’s loyalty to Israel. He’s seen as the Kremlin’s man in Jerusalem. It’s also possible that both Russian and Israeli intelligence have made use of Lieberman’s fluid loyalties for their own purposes. He may serve both parties. But ultimately, the only real interest he serves is his own.
Lieberman is a leader cut out of the Trump-Putin mold. He is a former bouncer from his native Moldova. A gruff, no-nonsense figure who has no need for finesse or nuance. He says the most racist, outrageous things and pays no price for it (sound like anyone you know?). Once he even beat up a teenager who’d been taunting his son. The police investigated him for assault, but he was never convicted of any crime.
Bibi Netanyahu’s political career will end at some point in the near future. When it does, there are several senior figures battling for ultimate power. Lieberman will be one of them. Like Trump, Lieberman stands only a heartbeat away from running his country. When and if he does, all bets are off. Israel, which is already no longer a democracy, will sink even deeper into a form of Israeli nationalist fascism.
For those who have any doubt of this, I mention only the latest in a long series of affronts. As defense minister, Lieberman controls Israeli Army Radio, one of the country’s most popular media outlets. When the current station manager aired a program on the poetry of Mahmoud Darwish, Lieberman became apoplectic. Darwish is the Palestinian national poet. He serves the same role as Chaim Nachman Bialik in Israeli literary culture.
Darwish’s poetry is both powerful and exquisite. His is the ultimate expression of Palestinian national identity in poetic form. His literary power derives from the fact that he uses wry irony, wit, and satire, and abjures bombast. His poetry stings, but hardly ever shouts. For this reason, Darwish poses an enormous problems for Israeli Jewish nationalists. He doesn’t throw bombs. He doesn’t brandish knives. His only weapons are words.
If Israel was a nation of all its citizens, the Darwish would be an honored native son. He would be recited on Israel’s national day. Children would memorize poems in elementary school. Instead, he was driven into exile in 1966 and never returned till a few months before his death in 2008.
But the relationship between official Israel and Darwish is an ambivalent one. He is taught as part of the regular public school curriculum, even for Jewish students. So there is some recognition that he isn’t just a Palestinian poet, but a poet of all of Israel.
Returning to Lieberman: he summoned the Army Radio manager for a dress-down lecture on the evils of Darwish. He went even further:
Lieberman accused Darwish of calling for the expulsion of Jews in his poems, said further that…the poet cannot be included as part of Israel’s narrative. He said that “by the same logic we could add the Mufti al-Husseini to the Israeli narrative or broadcast a glorification of the literary marvels of Adolf Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf.’
Lieberman is a boor and barbarian. To make such an odious comparison he can’t have read a word of Darwish’s poetry. Even worse, Lieberman has set Israeli Palestinians at war with Israeli Jews. If the poet who represents the glorious height of Palestinian poetic expression can be likened to Adolph Hitler, can there be any room for Palestinians in a state led by Lieberman?
Lieberman already adovcates a form of ethnic-cleansing lite for Israel’s Palestinian minority. But in this statement he’s performed an exorcism of Palestinian culture from Israeli society. He seeks to cleanse not only people, but also their literature and culture from Israeli society.
Richard the gay stuff about the Orlando shooter was debunked by the FBI
@ John F: No, it wasn’t. Perhaps debunked by Breitbart or one of the other right wing rags you read. Don’t ever make claims here without offering credible evidence & links. Your opinion counts for nothing.
I clearly remember this from
Cnn and other mainstream news outlets. I just did a google search for a little while and couldn’t find anything on the gay motive. That’s because it was debunked. Lots of stuff comes out in the immediate wake of an event like that but when the dust settled it turned out those rumors were unfounded (ie dating apps, was there a dozen times before, etc). And for you to demand evidence for clams after that fabricated statistic that the Israeli police are in a war against the Palestinians with 200 killed since September?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Orlando_nightclub_shooting#Perpetrator
Debunked?
“Also, nothing has been found that confirms the speculation that he was gay and used gay dating apps; however, the FBI “has found evidence that Mateen was cheating on his wife with other women”.
@John F: A lesson in research. You offer a quote, you offer the source. You offer the authority quoted in the source. That enables us to determine whether you’re offering rubbish or credible information.
Numerous individual sources have been quoted in MSM saying they either had a homosexual relationship with him or knew him via the gay club. That is credible information or sourcing. What you offer is rubbish (so far).
Here is an MSM source indicating that the FBI has not done it’s homework regarding the gay/ homophobic motive for Mateen’s crime:
From the same article:
That’s how you do research.
Finally, not being to confirm a gay motive is not the same as discarding or rejecting a gay motive. Learn the difference.
Richard the quote was from the Wikipedia page Elizabeth posted
@John F: Next time say that.
Richard why do you revel in your liberal use of “Jewish terrorism”
@John F: You call the acts of Arabs who commit violence “Arab terror.” But you object when Jewish terrorists commit murder in the name pf Judaism??
I call Israeli Jews who murder Palestinians, Jewish terrorists. Because that’s what they are. If you wish to say they’re not Jewish because their view of Judaism is a chill hashem I’d join you in that. But you don’t choose to do that since they’re your brothers in hate.
I will use Jewish terrorism where appropriate but you clearly have an agenda of rationalizing or excusing acts of Muslim and Arab terror or denying it has anything to do with Islam while a ubundantly using Jewish terrorism, even in fraudulently such as your bizarre and unfounded claim that Israeli police have murdered 200 Palestinians since September
@John F:
I did no such thing. I attempt to clarify the motives of killers. The German authorities, who’ve refused even to label the Munich attack an act of terror, do the same thing. I object to Islamophobe like you who jump to conclusions.
200 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli army & police since September. That is a fact. Not in dispute. If you call such a fact unfounded you’ll be excluded from publishing comments here.
Wow! That was a bit of selective quoting John F. The link also contained all of this:
An unnamed police academy classmate said Mateen asked him out around 2006, that they had spent time at gay bars together after class, and that he believed Mateen was gay
A man who self-identified as Mateen’s lover-of-two-months, “Miguel”, stated that he believed the massacre was out of revenge against Latino men when Mateen learned he may have been exposed to HIV from a Puerto Rican man with whom he had sex.
At least four regular Pulse customers reported having seen Mateen visit the nightclub on no fewer than a dozen occasions.
According to a witness who recognized him outside the club an hour before the shootings, Mateen had messaged him using Jack’d, a gay dating app, intermittently over the course of a year before the attack.
Another witness said Mateen used Grindr, a gay hook-up app, and Adam4Adam website to communicate with gay men, and had posted pictures of himself on both sites.
A third witness said Mateen would try to pick up men at the nightclub.
However, according to federal law enforcement officials, the FBI suspects the witnesses could be mistaken, and has doubts that Mateen was gay. Law enforcement sources said the FBI found no photographs, text messages, smartphone apps, pornography, or cell tower location data to suggest Mateen lived a gay life, closeted or otherwise.
Mateen’s father said he did not believe his son was homosexual. Mateen’s ex-wife, however, claimed that his father called him gay while in her presence. Speaking on her behalf, her current fiancé said that she, his family, and others believed he was gay, and that “the FBI asked her not to tell this to the American media”.
There’s a lot more to this “Siberian Candidate” allegation than was in Krugman’s column. Read the stories in the NY Times online and check out all the links, notably, to an article published in Slate. This article makes it extremely credible that Trump receives much of his financing from Russians and is in cahoots with Russian gangsters, of which Putin is one. Trump is actually “The Muscovian Candidate.”
As for Liberman, I don’t believe he’ll ever become Israel’s Prime Minister, but you never know.
Yvette might be right in his comparison: after all like Hitler, Mahmoud Darwish had a Jewish lover …..
No, seriously, such an ignorant and ugly person insulting Darwish should be seen as the ultimate compliment.
One of Darwish’s most famous poems is ‘Rita and the Rifle’ which was written for his first love, Tamar Ben Ami, the 1967 war made an end to this relationship.
Rita and the Rifle put into music by Lebanese composer and singer Marcel Khalifé (Khalifa/Khalifeh): subtitles in English ‘between Rita and my eyes there’s a rifle’….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIs4azDRfPk
Action – Reaction
“Given that U.S. policy for the past decade has been based on a profound suspicion of Putin’s motives and an attempt to contain his wild, expansionist impulses in Ukraine and elsewhere …”
For a moment I thought you would mention the imperialism of NATO expansion into former Soviet satellite states, but I was wrong.
The best that could have happened to diminish the Northern Atlantic’s war footing became reality! Brexit and Britain’s turn eastward towards it’s former colony the USA. The UK can’t even build its own Trident nuclear subs … adding dollars to MIC at the behest of a global NATO defence (?) force.
I read your blog for serious commentary on Israel. Your amateur commentary on Russia/Putin/Ukraine is just that, amateur. You know Israel. You don’t know much about Russia. Stick with what you know.
@Ferruge: You mean “stick with what YOU know and like.” Sorry, no can do. I don’t write for you according to your own prejudices. Nor am I a shill for anyone, including Putin.
” …an attempt to contain his wild, expansionist impulses in Ukraine and elsewhere ”
As a faithful reader and admirer, I am disappointed that you appear to have bought in to this State Dep’t. bullsh*t.
Why not say that Trump is not a real American, saying that he is in reality a German makes much of the bad publicity vanish. Vladimir Putin is what he is claimed to be because his grandfather was a cook serving Stalin, who in turn was from Georgia. Netanyahu is naturally only Polish, which explains all. Moshe Katsav is Iranian which explains his attitude towards women and acts, Ariel Sharon was a Palestinian which explained his rude and violent nature etc. The world is much simpler with such assumptions to Americans and Israelis, even to those who are less Israel supporting.
So it is not racist and forbidden to say Lieberman is what he is because he is a Moldavian (1) boor and barbarian and but it would be totally racist and improper to say Lieberman is that because he is a Jewish (2) boor and barbarian. Not even when Lieberman himself has praised his parents for the Jewish upbringing they gave him and the history of living in a strong Jewish surrounding in Chișinău. It demands some creative “efforts” to explain, why option 1 is OK and option 2 is very bad. Lieberman and his rude style is not unique in Israeli politics. There are plenty of other racist vocal populists in Knesset and local levels. Some make Lieberman even look as a secular moderate. And all of them are not from Moldova or even from the old Soviet Union. Not all Moldavian are like Lieberman.
Lieberman worked as a nightclub bouncer in a student club in Tel Aviv, that is a known fact. It is very difficult to find any sources which would tell where in Soviet Union Lieberman worked as a night club bouncer. In the end of 1970’s there were very few night clubs in the whole Soviet Union. Some in Moscow’s and Leningrad’s international hotels, tourist ares in the south, but was there any in Chișinău? These soviet night clubs operated mostly using foreign western currencies and normal local people were not allowed to enter. Would these incredible tight guarded hotels and night-clubs in the “communist paradise” have recruited a high school student boy as their bouncer? Come-on. I visited that time both Leningrad and Tallinn as a student and tourist and the bouncers in the hotels and restaurants were not under 20-year old school boys, they were large bodybuilders with police rights and mentality. Would a Soviet inland city like Chișinău in a less loyal border region in the 70’s have had night-clubs and tourists is highly unlikely. Moldova’s Romanians were not very satisfied with Soviet style and rule. Leonid Breznev when working as the communist party leader of Moldova quashed there a mutiny. Anybody who knows European map and history knows that Moldova is very far from centers of power in Soviet Union and the population are mostly everything else but Russians. Moldova is a part of old Bessarabia.
Lieberman was already in the 90’s in high places in Likud’s organization. He worked as the administrative head of the party and the chief of PM Netanyahu’s office (1996-97). It is simply absurd to believe that Israel’s and USA’s secret services would have allowed him to get the necessary intelligence clearances if there would have been the slightest evidence of Lieberman’s links to FSB (former KGB). Not to mention the times now when Lieberman became minister of defense minister and has access to all that information and secrets the job offers. We can have many opinions of the competence of Mossad, CIA etc, but they are not so incompetent that they would miss this “undercover agent” during those 30 years of his “operations” with Russian regime.
Lieberman’s claimed warm links with Putin have not materialized when he has served as the foreign and defense minister. For Russia and Putin close ties with Lieberman or even with Israel is no real asset, on the contrary, it is the worst kind “commercial” when negotiating with Arabs and Iranians about co-operation in energy production and huge weapon trades. If some in the competitive and rude Israeli political life claim that Lieberman is on the payroll of Russians is no wonder. It would be a wonder, that nobody would make such claims remembering Lieberman’s background and political support base.
@Simohurtta: The only reason I didn’t delete this comment is because you have commented here for a long time and I’ve appreciated your participation here.
But this comment violates several comments rules. First, it duplicates a series of comments you published here in the past. I hate repeating things. I hate rearguing subjects. Second, your comment goes on endlessly essentially repeating what you already published here. Third, the comment is off topic. Fourth, you offer no credible proof of your claims.
Don’t ever publish on this subject again here. I don’t want to repeat this a third time. And don’t reply in this thread either.
Numerous Israeli sources confirm that he was a bouncer in Moldova. It is an established fact. He has never disputed it. If you wish to dispute an established fact you must bring hard evidence to do so. You’ve brought nothing but a hunch and an opinion. That is unsatisfactory.
As for Trump. I do indeed feel his German ancestry is an important part of his personality. Numerous profiles of him have pointed out his ancestry.
I have never heard of anyone being called racist for calling someone a Moldovan nightclub bouncer especially when all of these claims are true. You’re breaking new ground and not in a good way.
Actually Lieberman’s style IS quite unique in Israeli politics. No one has made boasts and threats quite as gruesome & genocidal as he has. Also, his politically powerful position amplifies his villainous statements & threats.
Lieberman was a night club bouncher when he was a student at Hebrew University, I found no sources saying he was so while living in Moldavia his family emigrated to Israel when he was 20.
Maybe SimoHurrta is right: why not trace Lieberman’s personality back to his Jewish roots and education rather than his Moldavian (which in fact is ‘Romanian’) background ? To me he’s just an extreme exemple of Jewish/Israeli chutzpah and rudeness,
@ Deir Yassin: It appears that what SimoHurtta & you said is true. I confused his job as a nighbtclub bouncer after he emigrated to Israel with his life in Moldova.
I think that if 1-million non-Jewish Russians emigrated to Israel their politics would be very similar to those of the Russian Jews who emigrated. Further, I don’t think there’s a Jewish gene for thuggery. And while of course there are thugs in every country, I think Russian society & politics puts a premium on this sort of quality.
I don’t think there’s a Jewish gene for thuggery either not a Russian one. Many of the Jews coming from former Soviet Union are not Russians, though we often says Russian because it’s easier. Remember the Ziad Jilani-case and some of the other killings by Border Police where many were immigrants from the former Soviet Republics of Central Asia.
@ I do believe that there are qualities that tend to be emphasized or preferred in certain societies like that of the former Soviet Union. Russia being the dominant one of the former republics, the Russian strongman/ despotic (czars, Lenin, Stalin, Putin, etc) tendency is evident among many immigrants to Isrsel from FSU.
?Lieberman;s agitation against the poet Mahmoud Darwish. When Trum,p wins will he endeavor to have the following poem erased from the entrance hall of the United Nations?
“All human beings are members of one frame,
Since all, at first, from the same essence came.
When time afflicts a limb with pain
The other limbs at rest cannot remain.
If thou feel not for other’s misery
A human being is no name for thee.”
It is after all from a Persian poet (albeit a long dead one) and, moreover, totally at odds with the Trumpian ethos.
For Elisabeth
Elisabeth I might be telling you something here that you already know – on the other hand you might not. The poem I quoted above is from the thirteenth century Persian poet Sa’adi. It might interest you to know that when the great Dutch poet Jacques Bloem had to pick the verse of that other great Dutch poet, J.H.. Leopold, that he liked best he didn’t choose one of Leopold’s original verses but his translation of a verse by Sa’adi (not the one quoted above). You can find it in Bloem’s bundle “Persoonlijke Voorkeur”. This was a second – or third hand translation because as you know Leopold was a classicist, thoroughly at home in Latin and Greek but not in Persian.
Thanks Arie! I think I know which poem you mean now.
I have never seen your website before until now. I am shocked at what a racist-Antisemitic rag you are. As a Holocaust survivor I find your website totally demeaning.
@Albert Linder: I have done some research and it appears you are indeed a Holocaust survivor. Regardless of this, your experience doesn’t seem to have taught you that there were many different types of Jews in the camps. Quite a few have completely different views than yours.
I also published an oral history of Holocaust survivor, Malvina Schwartz, who survived Auschwitz. You should read it before denouncing me further.
Your disgusting insults & lies about my views are reprehensible and demean other Holocaust survivors who feel entirely differently than you. Your suffering doesn’t give you any special wisdom to declare views you abhor to be anti-Semitic. You are pathetic and make me feel terribly sad for you.
Oh well, when Larry Derfner penned a piece criticizing young people for getting an Auschwitz number tattoo on their arms (http://972mag.com/quiet-theyre-memorializing-the-holocaust/56907/)
the same Albert Linder chimed in: “I am a survivor and you are grotesque in your imbecilic hatred of Israel and Jews.”
Hurling insults like that is his thing apparently.
Did Putin hack DNC emails for Trump’s sake?
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/26/us/politics/kremlin-donald-trump-vladimir-putin.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=a-lede-package-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news